Tag Archives: SDK

Dialog Semiconductor recently announced its support for WeChat’s communications protocol with the launch of its WeChat SDK. With the kit, you can quickly add Bluetooth connectivity between WeChat apps and wearables and other IoT devices. Dialog’s development kit is available now and includes a protocol stack for the WeChat communication layer. The SDK—which is based on the DA1458x family of SmartBond SoCs—enables you to reduce the overall development time for connecting their products wirelessly to WeChat apps. Your users can control wearable devices via the app and share information via the platform.

The CY920 module is based on Microchip’s DM920 Wi-Fi Network Media Processor, which features 2.4- and 5-GHz 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, high-speed USB 2.0 and Ethernet connectivity. By using the 5-GHz band, speakers aren’t impacted by the RF congestion found in the 2.4-GHz band.

The DM920 processor also features integrated dual 300-MHz DSP cores that can reduce or eliminate the need for costly standalone DSP chips. An PC-based GUI simplifies the use of a predeveloped suite of standard speaker-tuning DSP algorithms, including a 15-band equalizer, multiband dynamic range compression, equalizer presets, and a variety of filter types. Even if you don’t have DSP coding experience, you can implement DSP into your designs.

JukeBlox 4 enables you to directly stream cloud-based music services, such as Spotify Connect and Rhapsody, while using mobile devices as remote controls. Mobile devices can be used anywhere in the Wi-Fi network without interrupting music playback. In addition, JukeBlox technology offers cross-platform support for iOS, Android, Windows 8, and Mac, along with a complete range of audio codecs and ease-of-use features to simplify network setup.

The JukeBlox 4 SDK, along with the JukeBlox CY920 module, is now available for sampling and volume production.

Altera Corp. has simplified a programmer’s ability to accelerate algorithms in FPGAs. The Altera SDK for OpenCL version 14.0 includes a programmer-familiar rapid prototyping design flow that enables users to prototype designs in minutes on an FPGA accelerator board. Altera, along with its board partners, further accelerate the development of FPGA-based applications by offering reference designs, reference platforms and FPGA development boards that are supported by Altera’s OpenCL solution. These reference platforms also streamline the development of custom FPGA accelerators to meet specific application requirements.

Altera is the only company to offer a publicly available, OpenCL conformant software development kit (SDK). The solution allows programmers to develop algorithms with the C-based OpenCL language and harness the performance and power efficiencies of FPGAs. A rapid prototyping design flow included in the Altera SDK for OpenCL version 14.0 allows OpenCL kernel code to be emulated, debugged, optimized, profiled and re-compiled to a hardware implementation in minutes. The re-compiled kernels can be tested and run on an FPGA immediately, saving programmers weeks of development time.

Altera and its board partners further simplify the experience of getting applications up and running using FPGA accelerators by offering a broad selection of Altera-developed reference platforms, reference designs and FPGA accelerator boards. Altera provides a variety of design examples that demonstrate how to describe applications in OpenCL, including OPRA FAST Parser for finance applications, JPEG decoder for big data applications and video downscaling for video applications.

Design teams that want to create custom solutions that feature a unique set of peripherals can create their own custom FPGA accelerators and save significant development time by using Altera-developed reference platforms. The reference platforms include an SoC platform for embedded applications, a high-performance computing (HPC) platform and a low-latency network enabled platform which utilizes IO Channels.

One notable enhancement is production support for I/O Channels that allow streaming data into and out of the FPGA as well as kernel channels allowing the result reuse from one kernel to another in a hardware pipeline for significantly higher performance and throughput with little to no host and memory interaction. Another enhancement is production support for single-chip SoC solutions (Cyclone V SoC and Arria V SoC), where the host is an embedded ARM core processor integrated in the FPGA accelerator.

Altera’s SDK for OpenCL allows programmers to take OpenCL code and rapidly exploit the massively parallel architecture of an FPGA. Programmers targeting FPGAs achieve higher performance at significantly lower power compared to alternative hardware architectures, such as GPUs and CPUs. On average, FPGAs deliver higher performance at one-fifth the power of a GPU. Altera’s OpenCL solutions are supported by third-party boards through the Altera Preferred Board Partner Program for OpenCL. Visit www.altera.com/opencl.

The Altera SDK for OpenCL is currently available for download on Altera’s website (www.altera.com/products/software/opencl/opencl-index.html). The annual software subscription for the SDK for OpenCL is $995 for a node-locked PC license. For additional information about the Altera Preferred Board Partner Program for OpenCL and its partner members, or to see a list of all supported boards and links to purchase, visit the OpenCL section on Altera’s website.

The Arduino USB Host Shield allows you to connect a USB device to your Arduino board. The Arduino USB Host Shield is based on the MAX3421E, which is a USB peripheral/host controller containing the digital logic and analog circuitry necessary to implement a full-speed USB peripheral or a full-/low-speed host compliant to USB specification rev 2.0.

The shield is TinkerKit compatible, which means you can quickly create projects by plugging TinkerKit modules onto the board. The following device classes are supported by the shield:

HID devices: keyboards, mice, joysticks, etc.

Game controllers: Sony PS3, Nintendo Wii, Xbox360

USB to serial converters: FTDI, PL-2303, ACM, as well as certain cell phones and GPS receivers

For information on using the shield with the Android OS, refer to Google’s ADK documentation. Arduino communicates with the MAX3421E using the SPI bus (through the ICSP header). This is on digital pins 10, 11, 12, and 13 on the Uno and pins 10, 50, 51, and 52 on the Mega. On both boards, pin 10 is used to select the MAX3421E.